Hindi, Punjabi and English: choosing a language for each Delhi buyer

Reply in the language the buyer used first, not the one your template was written in. In Delhi's wholesale lanes that is mostly Hindi, much of it typed in English letters. Many retailers who come down from Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Amritsar use Punjabi. The offices of South Delhi, Connaught Place and Nehru Place write in English. The buyer tells you which in the first message. Your job is to notice, note it against the enquiry, and hand it to someone on your team who speaks it.

Read the first message, not the address

The usual map of Delhi runs by market: Hindi and Punjabi in the wholesale lanes, English in the offices. That map is a poor guide to any one buyer. A retailer from Jalandhar may write to you in Hindi. A Lajpat Nagar shopkeeper may send a voice note in Punjabi. An office in Karol Bagh may write in formal English.

So read what arrived. The script is the first clue: Devanagari, Gurmukhi, or Hindi in Roman letters ("bhai rate bhejo"). The greeting is the second. "Sat Sri Akal ji" and "Namaste bhaiya" and "Hi team" are three different conversations. The third clue is the format. A buyer who sends a voice note is telling you they do not want to type, and they will not read a long reply either.

Do not guess from a surname or a town. You will get it wrong, and the buyer will notice.

Six rules for the reply

1. Match the language and the script of the first message. Roman Hindi gets Roman Hindi. Devanagari gets Devanagari only if someone on your team can type it without mistakes.
2. A voice note gets a voice note or a call back, from a person who speaks that language. A typed English template in answer to a Punjabi voice note says "we are a company now, not your shop".
3. If the buyer switches mid-conversation, switch with them. A retailer who starts in Punjabi and moves to Hindi for the rate may be forwarding it to a partner.
4. Keep the quotation in English: item names, sizes, rates and terms. The buyer's munim or accountant reads that document, and the item names should match your invoice. The covering message goes in the buyer's language.
5. When nobody on duty speaks the language, say so in Hindi and give a time: "Punjabi mein baat karne wale Gurpreet ji 4 baje call karenge."
6. Write the way the counter speaks. A shuddh Hindi auto-reply such as "aapka anurodh prapt hua" reads like a government office. Polite bazaar Hindi, "ji, rate list bhej rahe hain", reads like a shop that knows the buyer.

Who answers which language

Rules mean nothing if every message lands on one phone held by the owner's son. In some Old Delhi firms, that is exactly the set-up. A column in the register does more here than new software.

Add four fields to whatever sheet or register holds your enquiries: language, script, text or voice, and who answered. Fill the first three when the message arrives and route on them. Punjabi voice notes go to the salesman who speaks Punjabi. English requests for quotation from offices go to whoever writes clean English and knows the price list. Hindi trade enquiries stay at the counter. WhatsApp Business labels or a shared inbox can carry the tag, but a pen column does the same job on day one.

The point is that a Ludhiana retailer's question reaches a Punjabi speaker inside the hour, rather than whenever the owner's son gets to it.

What changes on the website and in broadcasts

The website stays in English, because the office buyer reads it and your product names are English anyway. Add one line beside the WhatsApp button: "Hindi, Punjabi aur English mein baat karein." It tells the retailer from Amritsar that the shop will understand, and costs nothing to translate. Website copy for a Delhi trader is mostly decisions like that one: which line goes in which language, and where.

Broadcasts split the same way. A rate change or a festive stock message goes out twice: Roman Hindi to the trade list, English to the office list. One mixed message in two languages reads badly to both. Keep the two lists separate so nobody has to choose by hand each time.

For example: a jeans wholesaler in Gandhi Nagar

Imagine a wholesaler of jeans and shirts in Gandhi Nagar, the garment market across the Yamuna in east Delhi. The owner's daughter took over the WhatsApp number and set up an English auto-reply: "Dear Customer, thank you for contacting us. Please find attached our latest price list." A retailer from Phagwara, who had bought from her father for years, sent a Punjabi voice note asking whether the old credit days still held at the new wedding-season rates.

The retailer got the auto-reply and a PDF. Nobody answered the question, so the retailer rang a wholesaler two shops down, who picked up and spoke in Punjabi.

One template for every buyer caused it, and three changes undid it. Saved trade numbers stopped getting the auto-reply, so old customers reached a person. Voice notes went to the munim, who is from Punjab. The price list stayed in English, with two lines of Roman Hindi on top. Online resellers from Pune and Bengaluru, who wrote in English, kept the English reply, because that is what they wanted.

The Phagwara retailer was gone for that season, and the orders with them. The next Punjabi voice note, from a shop in Jalandhar, got a call back in Punjabi before lunch, with the credit question settled on the phone.

When not to switch

If a buyer writes to you in English, answer in English, even if you are sure they speak Hindi. In an office purchase, a switch to Hindi can look like you are not taking the order seriously.

Do not put Punjabi on your website or your visiting card if one person speaks it and that person goes home to Punjab for a month every winter. A promise you cannot keep for a month is worse than no promise.

And do not send machine-translated Punjabi. A native reader spots it in a line. For campaigns rather than replies, the notes on adapting a campaign into Indian languages cover the extra steps.

Mark the language on today's open enquiries

Open the enquiries still waiting for an answer today. Beside each, write the language and script the buyer used and the language your team replied in. Every mismatch is a buyer you made work harder, and these ones can still be answered properly. Setting up the routing so each language reaches the right phone is lead routing and assignment; if you want that done across your team, tell us what you need.